Dragonfruit Pollinating

Not many people know if their dragon fruit needs pollinating. I have just had some flowers show up on my 7 year old dragon fruit plant which has given me many fruit over the years. 

I've been asked how I know when its about open and when I pollinate by hand.

So this first photo shows the flower growing and ready to open. 

 Then the color changes to yellow at the flower end. the fruit end is closes to the plant

The flower end starts to expand. At this point below you know it will open that night, it was about 7pm when it opened. It only opens one night.

This is the majestic flower. The stamen is sitting outside and the pollen is inside. You take your finger or a brush and brush that large yellow bit inside and brush the protruding stamen sticking out.

I collected the extra pollen and put it in a plastic bag and stored it in the freezer ready for the next plant that is self pollinating - means it cannot pollinate it self and needs another plants pollen to do it.

This is two days after I pollinated it. The flower starts to droop and will turn brown, when the fruit appears behind and turns purple I will remove the flower and leave the stamen, this discourages the ants from ruining the fruit.

Dragonfruit poles 2020 - 2022

 I cant believe I never posted about my dragon fruit poles. The first 8 poles went in on 27 Jun 2020. 

This is the construction of the top support made by Len the Worm Farmer. 18 months later Jan 2022 these are the results. I've negelcted them over time and not pruned them or fed them as much as I should. This year I shall do a better job I promise.

Below mulching in between the beds on top of the cardboard so the weeds dont grow again and if I want to use the space I'll put the raised beds inbetween on top of the mulch

In the photo below you can see cuttings I've left in the wheel barrow and they have grown lol, this proves you dont have to baby them too much

These three fruit below are from my  7 year old cutting I got from my Uncle Devlin. You can see the original plant HERE that I treated poorly lol 

January 26, 2022 photos taken

This one is ready to open. I have been checking them everyday

Dragonfruit and new garden bed

This is my newest raised garden bed built by the wonderful Worm Farm man Len, he is very talented. I gave him the tin and the wood and away he went. He may start a business building these on the island. I had it tailored made for me with the edges so I could sit on it when gardening.

So my awesome dragon fruit (wish I had treated it better when we brought it over from the mainland in a pot and just dumped it by this tree with plans to plant it properly but it grew so fast while we were settling in. 4 years later it has grown out of hand and give us a few fruit each year that is just the juiciest and sweetest. The tree is 7 years old. You can see the pot plant I dumped HERE

This is the tree I want to plant the dragon fruit on and will do so this season after it fruits.

Found these three flowers about to fruit when we weeded, they were growing in the ground.

 

Compost Bin

So I have two compost bins that I have had going for 3 years, have not harvested anything so far because this is what happens. Obviously it's a very healthy compost because everything is growing out of it lol. 

Pumpkin, ginger, turmeric, chokos, something else that is climbing, tomatoes. 

So now I don't put anything in my compost that has seeds unless I want to plant it.

Dragon fruit and Cardboard

What a combination you ask!!  Well not a good combination but they are in the same area in my back garden. I was very busy on the weekend cleaning up all the mess as you can see beside my taro plants. Recently we've had a lot of rain and with me working during the week, I have had no time to weed so they took over my back garden where my raised beds are.

You can see in this POST what it looked like before weeds lol

Weeding is back breaking work so I have been collecting cardboard from all over the island and have now put it down before I put down mulch to contain the weeds once and for all. I've instructed the garden boy (husband) to put down some mulch everyday (while I am at work) so we don't have to do it all in one hit and break our backs lol.

Next post will show you the amazing compost bin and newest raised garden bed, stay tuned.

My first bake in the new oven

Hubby told my brothers that I would not use the new oven because that's what I've done in the past and never used anything new he bought me....well SURPRISE I wasted no time and as soon as the gas fitter came on Monday to install the final part to my oven I was in there baking at 5.30am.

My favourite and famous Chiffon Cake, recipe from my very good friend Josephine has been a no fail one (all the fails have been my fault because I have seen and eaten her cakes).

You can see my FAILED cakes here which was not so long ago (4 months ago). Those failed cakes were cooked in an electric oven. I love this recipe because it doesn't use butte, I always forget to bring the butter out of the fridge to come to room temperature. 

I say nothing cooks better than a gas oven as you can see from below. Now I had abit of a disaster, you can see on the left cake the indentation of my hand. As soon as I removed the cake pan and tried to invert it, the pan fell on my arm and gave me 2nd degree burns.

I used the fan force and baked for 45mins on 160C then turned the oven up to 180C and cooked a further 10 mins PERFECT, no cracks.

As you can see this cake had holes in it, in THIS recipe it says to use a knife and cut through the batter to remove air pockets (I didnt do that) I also forgot the cream of tartar and the vanilla (doesn't say int he recipe but I always put it in as it smells good) lol.

This RECIPE explains alot about the dos and don't which should be adhered to for a successful bake

 I also didn't put a glaze on it but this glaze looks good:

Orange Glaze

1/2 cup butter

2 cups icing sugar

2 - 4 tbsp fresh orange juice

1/2 tsp grated orange zest

I also made my favourite Portugese Egg Tarts. I had ordered these tart cases and they arrived so I put them to good use and made my first batch. Ooh so yummy straight out of the oven.

I had started to make the puff pastry from scratch but the recipe was incomplete so I got the puff pastry out of the freezer and used that instead. I will have to find a better pastry recipe and will attempt it again. I'll also be tweaking the recipe so that the custard doesnt start to set while I am making the molds.

UPDATED 24TH JAN: Doctor is very pleased with my burn after 2 weeks, it has healed and is ready to be aired to have skin grow over.

Sharing this post with Sherry's Pickings about In My Kitchen

I'm in Heaven - New Oven

All my dreams have come true. I will understand if you aren't a cook that you will think "whats the big deal". Trust me I have never been so in awe of my beautiful dream come true oven that was installed by my wonderful family on the weekend. Each time I walk past that oven I think "is that really mine?"

TA DA!!!

The brand is Emilia EM9655GG and Italian, why did we choose that brand? It has a gas cook top and gas oven and service men will come to the island in the future if needed - that is an important point when buying appliances on the island.

I lost two pot cupboards but what a swap hey!!!

This is what I cooked on before, just a gas stove

I had removed the top drawer before I took this photo, the electric cord wasn't even plugged in to allow the jets to be lit by an automatic click action.

 

All the cupboards had to be emptied before we could do anything. The counter in the stove top area had to be cut out to be able to install the new oven.

A few days before the instal I ran out of LPG gas, we have two and I completely forgot after the first one ran out to order another one. So out came the camping stoves to cook, boy oh boy the difference between LPG and can gas is noticable. We could not cook our roti (Indian bread) well and it kept burning or not cooking at all which made the roti hard.

Unveiling the new oven

That is one huge box and will be put to good use in the garden. I am lining my garden with cardboard then topping it with mulch to keep the weeds at bay. Tired of constantly weeding.

My wonderful husband and brothers and uncle came to help and put my baby in.

Today I await the arrival of the gas fitter to install the gas part of it and connect it to the LPG tank. Then away I go cooking/baking to my hearts content.

So I tried to see how many cakes I could cook at once

1 chiffon cake and 2 pizzas

4 chiffon cakes

Gas versus electric comparison